Josh Peck on Sobriety and Self-Improvement | You Have Been Misled

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to Josh Peck about his new book “Happy People Are Annoying” (which you can pick up at The Painted Porch), his journey from being a child actor to getting sober at 21, the power of breaking the cycle of generational trauma, and more.🎓 Sign up for Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy For Your Actual Life - https://dailystoic.com/101Josh Peck is an American actor, comedian, and YouTuber. Josh began his career as a child actor in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Peck rose to prominence for his role as Josh Nichols alongside Drake Bell's character in the Nickelodeon sitcom Drake & Josh. His new book, which was released just yesterday, “Happy People Are Annoying,” is a humorous and candid memoir reflecting on the stumbles and silver linings of his life—including early struggles with food, drugs, self-esteem, and self-sabotage—and traces a zigzagging path to redemption. Links: Daxflame interviews Josh Peck | Curious with Josh Peck: Ep. 32 | Ryan Holiday Try Surfshark risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/STOIC. Enter promo code STOIC for 83 % off and three extra months free! The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today. DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 50% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Josh Peck: Homepage, Instagram, Twitter, YouTubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  You have been misled. For hundreds of years, the word "stoic" has been thought to mean emotionlessness. As a result, most people assume that Stoicism, then, is a philosophy built around this kind of unfeelingness, an unflinching endurance of pain and indifference to any and all pleasures. It's a strange perception, given you not just the actual writings of the Stoics, but their actual lives, which were a direct contradiction of this stereotype. Of the few stories about Marcus Aurelius that survived, three involve him crying. In addition to the heartfelt letters that he wrote to his friends, Seneca's favorite genre of writing was known as "the consolation",

• 1:24Speaker 00

  and no one can pick up these essays on grief, one to his mother no less, and think that he was emotionless. Cato clearly loved his son and his daughter, and was noted for weeping over the loss of his brother and his passionate objection to tyrants and bullies his whole life. The Stoics were far from emotionless. They were people who loved, who grieved, who cried, who were scared, who sacrificed, who cared about their neighbors, who raised children, who bled and died for change, who strove, who lived. And if I have one overarching goal here at Daily Stoic, it's to restore this vibrant, action-oriented and paradigm-shifting way of living to its rightful place as a tool

• 2:06Speaker 00

  in the pursuit of self-mastery and perseverance and wisdom, something that you actually use to live a good life, which is the the purpose of this course we've been working on, Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life. Stoicism 101 has become our most popular course at Daily Stoic, and and we're reopening the registration here in 2022. There's a live cohort that's officially open. Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy for Your Actual Life is a 14-day course dedicated to teaching you what Stoicism is really about, crushing this stereotype of lowercase Stoicism, and helping equip you with the tools to live

• 2:47Speaker 00

  a vibrant and expansive life like all the great Stoics we've talked about. Whether you're new to Stoicism or you've been studying it for years, learning, as Marcus really has responded to a friend who asked why he was still attending philosophy classes, is always a good thing. And as some of the participants in Stoicism 101 told us, "I discovered Stoicism five or six years ago, and it completely changed my life. And Stoicism has helped me as much as anything, but this course took my understanding to the next level." Another said they'd only just started reading my books, but now they have a word for their lifelong philosophy in seeing the world, Stoicism. And someone else who said, "If you're new to Stoicism, you are in for quite a life change." So in 14 custom emails delivered

• 3:30Speaker 00

  every day, that's 20,000 words of exclusive content, you'll learn about who the famous Stoics were, the things a Stoic does, things a Stoic doesn't do, what sets Stoicism apart from other philosophies, the key components of a Stoic's ideal day, the Stoic's secrets to success, the Stoic's secret to resilience, and the Stoic's secret to productivity, and a lot more. There's also going to be three live video sessions with me. We call them "office hours." Obviously, I know a thing or two about Stoicism, or you wouldn't be listening here. You're going to be getting the kinds of insights about ancient philosophy and Getting to have me answer questions like I've done for the NBA and the NFL, people in the military, people in business, people in politics,

• 4:14Speaker 00

  and we're going to get to talk like this was a university class. Basically, for far less than the tuition to even one philosophy course at even a community college, to say nothing of the overpriced Ivy League these days, you get, as part of Stoicism 101: Ancient Philosophy for Actual Life, all the things you actually need to know about Stoicism. You'll learn about it directly from me. And we're going to have a good time together. And this is a live course. It begins on Tuesday, March 22. All participants will move through the course together at the same time. And registration is now open. And registration will close on Monday, March 21 at midnight. And you can sign up at dailystoic.com/101.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Love to have you. Also, remember, if you sign up for Daily Stoic Life at dailystoiclife.com, you get this course and all other courses for free. So I hope to see you in Stoicism 101.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You can still hear my congestion. I'm sorry. But I was thinking, it's like, basically another lifetime ago, before I wrote books, before I even apprenticed under Robert Greene, I had a job in Hollywood. The summer after my sophomore year in college, before I knew I was going to drop out, I went to Hollywood and I worked at a talent agency called The Collect, right in Beverly Hills, on Wilshire and Duhini. And it was a pretty prestigious firm. They represented all sorts of big actors and celebrities, then ultimately, a bunch of big musicians. My

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Weird foray into it had been this blog that I'd been writing, an author I was working for, and I sort of got adopted as a protege again for a talent manager there. And I was, I don't know, I guess that's what I thought I would do. I thought I would work in the entertainment business. I loved TV and I loved movies. I loved art. I loved books, of course. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but that was just so much more interesting than anything I knew growing up. I was very excited about it. And I would go every day to this agency and I don't remember all the things that I would do, but I remember being very into how the internet was intersecting with the entertainment business, specifically

• 6:39Speaker 00

  what was then called Web 2.0 and social media. And I signed their first YouTube client while I was still an intern or an assistant. And so I was like this kid that was going places. And it was cool. It was exciting. A lot of the earliest posts on my blog were all about this life that I was on, this thing that I was thinking about, this place I was going to make my career. I still knew I wanted to be a writer, but maybe that was a long time in the future, or maybe it was gonna, I don't know. I don't know. In retrospect, I don't know exactly what I was thinking. I just knew it was a really good opportunity

• 7:21Speaker 00

  and I was learning a lot. And I very much looked up to the guy who was my boss there. And I would end up dropping out of college, specifically because he said, hey, why don't you not go back to college? He said, hey, why don't you not go back to college and work for me? And that was like my first real, real job. I remember he paid me $30,000 a year. And I remember, I remember saying out loud to another human being, I remember saying, what am I going to do with all this money? All of which set up today's guest, the actor Josh Peck, who as you'll hear in today's interview, he and I intersected there. We were in very different places in our lives, at very different levels of the entertainment

• 8:04Speaker 00

  business, but we intersected there for the first time for like 30 minutes. And there's like, Documentary evidence of this, like you can watch a video of the scene in which we interacted, although I'm not in it, I'm like right off camera, watching this surreal thing happen, which we mentioned in the episode and I'll link to in the notes, you can, you can watch this, this interview between Josh Peck and this, this kid named Dax Flame, who was an up and coming YouTuber at that time. And Josh was a child actor, he was the star of Drake and Josh, he'd just come out with this movie called The Whackness, which

• 8:45Speaker 00

  had won all these awards. He, and as we talk about in the interview, had also struggled with an addiction to drugs for some time and we were intersecting in a weird time in both of our lives, we're sort of both, kind of these unformed blobs of who we were gonna become. And it wasn't until several years later that I'd written my books and Josh had gone on to do many other things, that I got an Instagram DM from Josh, asking if I wanted to be on his podcast. And I said, hey, there's no way you remember me, but we interacted. And then, of course, he instantly did remember and we've become good friends since then. And when he sat down to write this book, he asked me for some advice and

• 9:28Speaker 00

  I helped, and I think it's a great book. His new book was just released yesterday, Happy People Are Annoying. It's a really funny, really honest and raw memoir about the stumbles and silver linings of his life, his issues with his parents, his struggle with food, with drugs, with self-esteem, self-sabotage, and ultimately, like, the redemption, the zigzagging path to who he is, which, like me, is a, a young guy who gets to do what he loves, he has a family that he loves, he's really focused on self-improvement, becoming his best self, and, and is into Stoicism. So it's been this awesome, cool experience. I've been on his podcast once or twice, I don't remember, you can listen to those episodes,

• 10:08Speaker 00

  we'll, we'll link to them. But it's been so cool to see Josh go on to not just be a great actor in a bunch of great stuff, including The Whackness, but- But also like a huge social media star. He's got like millions of followers on TikTok, millions of followers on YouTube and Instagram. He's built this huge sort of new media life for himself, which I'm so impressed and inspired by. His username on Twitter and Instagram is Shua Peck, S H U A P E C K, Shua Peck. And you can follow him on YouTube. He's Josh Peck. It's funny, I helped Josh set up his YouTube channel. He this, the point of having this

• 10:51Speaker 00

  collaboration we did was Josh was going to be a Hollywood celebrity who sets up a YouTube channel, which he promptly then ignored and never used, went on to start his own YouTube channel many years later to enormous success. But in this interview, we talk about all of our history, all of our experiences and a bunch of awesome stuff. And I do hope you check out his new book because it's really good. I wouldn't say that if if I didn't believe it. And I helped, I think, make it a little bit better, which I'm proud to say. And so you can check out Josh's book, Happy People Are Annoying, available everywhere. We link to it in the show notes, along with all those other stuff I'm mentioning.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  So before we before we did this, I rewatched our first interaction with each other. Did you? I did. Have you seen it lately? I have not. I haven't treated myself. Well, maybe we can start with that story. So for people who don't know, I my first job, I was a started as a basically a phone answer at a talent studio, a talent management agency in Beverly Hills, which you were a client at. And I signed their first YouTube client, this guy named Dax Flame, who is this sort of surreal Andy Kaufman-esque performer. And I had

• 12:15Speaker 00

  him interview you to launch your first YouTube channel. And you showed up, in my recollection,

• 12:23Speaker 00

  high out of your mind. Is that is that is that correct?

• 12:27Speaker 00

  No, I was sober. I was sober at that time. Yeah. You were already sober?

• 12:33Speaker 01

  I, not only was I sober, I was probably two or three months sober, but I was re, I had just had this crazy surgery snafu that I recently talked about on my podcast. It was sort of the impetus to get, I had to be sober for this surgery I was having, like two weeks prior.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  And obviously, and when we get into the book, so much led up to that moment. So it just wasn't like random, "Hey, I'm having surgery. I should probably clean up." It was certainly the right time, but I was recovering from a surgery gone wrong, having spent like two weeks in the hospital, hyperbaric chamber, like life threatening. But I also simultaneously had this movie I was promoting and I wanted to start a YouTube channel. So that's where, how I found myself six weeks later with the young and ambitious Ryan Holiday. And did I, did I ruin his career, Dax? Cause I heard through the grapevine that because I made that video with him and I didn't act the way he wanted me to, that he quit making videos

• 13:37Speaker 01

  for a while.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  Well, you know, it's so weird, right? We have these memories of how stuff went. And then when you actually, there's, there's a great book by David Carr called A Night of the Gun or something like that. It's sort of an addiction memoir. And he goes back and he about, he like investigates his own memory of things and he realizes that like every part of his memory of a series of events was like totally wrong. Um, so, so who, I mean, so this was, I'm, I'm looking at the date. This is April 2008. So would you have been, would you have gotten sober already?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause I got sober February 15th of 2008 and everyone wants to know what happened on Valentine's Day. And I hate to break it to you, but I was in no position to be anyone's Valentine at that time.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  Well, I just, so I remember, so here, here's how I remember the events going, which is I had signed this YouTube client and nobody understood what YouTube was then, uh, obviously in 2008, it had just been purchased for all this money, but no one was making serious entertainment on it. And so I had suggested in the staff meeting that we have like a celebrity client come on this guy. Thing and to launch their own YouTube channel. And you know how it goes, they went down the list of all the people they wouldn't dare bring this to. And then you were you were down there at the top of the middle of the list, I guess.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Sounds about right.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, but but like I remember thinking that you were acting so weirdly. Like here, this is, this is what I was gonna tell you. So I was looking at the first comment. This is from a year ago on the video, which already was still has 700,000 views, which is pretty crazy. And it says, this is one of the strangest videos on Dax's channel for no other reason than the fact that Dax is by far the least awkward person in the room.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  That's so good. That's so good. I just, you know what the, sorry, go.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  I had no idea what I have to be honest, and I'm with the same manager. Who was one of the people who was a partner in that company, you know, 15 years later. And he's done this to me twice and once was with Dax. And the second honestly was with Shane Dawson 10 years ago. Both of whom, I mean, Dax's, I mean, Dex, I was walking into Dex's whole shtick only worked. If the celebrity or the person working off of him was normal, right? Cause he was like this painfully uncomfortable.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Sort of awkward. I mean, I don't wanna, I think later it was sort of revealed that it was slightly like. Perhaps he was on the spectrum or something. So I don't wanna, I don't wanna put a negative connotation to it. It just, he had a specific way of interaction, which was funny. If the other person was trying hard to keep it sort of.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Sort of keep it up for the camera. But I just mirrored him because I didn't know what I was walking into. And I'm deeply obsessed with people pleasing and also don't want anyone to be funnier than me, especially at that time. And that's why the video just became like probably the most awkward 12 minutes on YouTube.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  It was, it was so strange. I mean, that's why his stuff was really good is that it was super awkward. So it was this kind of, I would argue it's one of the earliest sort of performance arts to go, it's performance art that sort of goes viral on the internet. And that's why it was popular and weird. And no one knew whether he was, yeah, whether he was on the spectrum, whether this was this horrible, like whether he shouldn't have had access to a camera and like his parents had no idea what he was doing, or if it was all like brilliant performance art. And it's, you know, uh, did you ever see that? This is at the Bob Saget roast, uh, where Norm MacDonald went up and he just bombed on purpose. Like he did like the worst act you could possibly do.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  The best, yes.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  This, this is, I wonder if that's a little bit what this is, is that you, you escalated the awkwardness so much that it was one of the most uncomfortable, like, cause watching it now, it made me uncomfortable, but I remember being in the room thinking like, what is happening? This is insane.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Well, not to mention the fact that like, yeah, it's, I, you can't meet Andy Kaufman at Andy Kaufman. You have to be Judd Hirsch, right? You have to be like screaming at him at his reaction, or just be so upset that this person is not subscribing to the, the social contract. And I didn't do that. I Kaufman Kaufman in this scenario. And because I didn't know what to expect. Similarly, I remember when I went and worked with Shane Dawson for the first time, I was 26, had never been on YouTube. And again, he was, he was represented by, by the collective, my manager's company at that time. And he's

• 18:33Speaker 01

  basically playing a, a black female character in the worst stereotype tropes that would never be allowed today. And I'm sitting there looking at my manager going, you okay at this? Like, this is, who's allowing this? And I similarly am awkward in that video.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  That's hilarious. No, it was such, so it was such a weird experience for me. And then I ended up leaving shortly thereafter and went on a totally different path in life as, as sort of you did too. And then we ended up coming back together many years later, which I want to talk about. But I, I just, it was such a weird, like, the whole experience is just seared in my memory as like a weird part of a life that I no longer have.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  It, it, yes, you're, I think in that way, we were sort of, we have a kinship in that there's like parts of our lives that we've lived that we so completely turned our back on that it's, it's almost as if it was another person.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Yes, totally. And, and then the weird part about stuff being documented now is that you can go back and look at it and you're like, wait, that, you can't deny that it was you because it was you and it's there on the internet.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  You could have so easily been an operator in the business and a guy who wears like a really nice suit and goes to annoying parties and has like kids that he sees sometimes and eats at Spago a lot and was like a captain of industry within show business. And instead, like, I can't imagine you as anything other than like the stoic who lives in Vastrop, who opens a bookstore during a pandemic for fun.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's weird to think, like, you look at all the different paths you could have gone in life and, uh, yeah, I could, I could be driving a Range Rover right now, living in Los Angeles. Uh, it probably, I, I could have been very successful, but would have been ultimately very unhappy. And I remember I was talking to you about this exact thing. And I was talking to you about how some people I knew then went on and, and you know, they, they started this company that was then worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And you were just like, yeah, but you couldn't have done that. Like, you're, you're not like, that I couldn't have done it, but that it would have been impossible for me to be that person. And that was actually like weirdly relieving for me to hear because it's not that I have

• 21:02Speaker 00

  regrets about it, but you sort of go like, would that have, should I have gone that way? What would have happened if I'd gone that way? And then you realize that actually you can't go any other way than the way that you ended up going.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  It's incredible to me when I see people who really get a kick out of like, I mean, there's like the normal jobs, like someone who's really in the spreadsheets and loves kicking ass as a CPA. And I'm like, ah, I look up to that. But then there are those types that you're referencing, those guys who who drive the Range Rovers and are real operators in the business. And it's like the art of the deal. They'll say things like, sell it, don't smell it without any irony, because their wins are different than ours.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember just being like, I had a couple of moments. I had one when I was there at the collective and then I had another one when I, when I was at American Apparel. And I remember being at this conference that I'd gone to like a couple of years in a row. And the first year I was there, I wasn't wearing a suit. And the next year I was there, I wasn't wearing a suit, but everyone else was. And I remember it occurring to me like the third time, like if I keep coming to this, eventually I'll be one of the people in a suit, right? That you can't be in that thing for too long without becoming like essentially everyone else. And so you sort of entertain this idea that you're different, that you're not fully a part of the system or whatever. But you can't do that for very long.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  I, I don't want to sound like I'm being critical because I love The Rock and I love Mark Wahlberg. But I look at those guys who are crushing it so hard. And now there's Mark Wahlberg Chevrolet and there's, you know, The Rock Energy Drink and Tequila. And I think like, did they conquer showbiz? And now it's like, like, what is their bet? Is it just this idea of being successful, putting your mind to something and succeeding and seeing it all the way through and moving on to the next thing? Is it just an entrepreneurial spirit? I, I don't know, because I'm not sure I possess that.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, or it's just like those operators in the business. It can, there's a lot of ways to be successful in life where you don't actually do anything or like contribute in any positive way. And if you're smart and hardworking and you know, not socially inept, you can, you can find your way into one of those positions pretty easily. But it's not the most fulfilling sort of purpose driven life out there.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, I think there's, I've certainly seen even the actors I look up to, I think that's why they become directors like, or, or something else in the business. Cause I think, I do think even with acting, you can always push it, but there are certain people where I'm like, oh, they figured it out. Like they know how to be good regularly. And I think they get a little bored.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Interesting. Well, so I was gonna, I, I was assuming, cause my memory, again, memory can be so deceiving. So I would have assumed that you were still an addict then, and I would be curious how your life changed. But that's really interesting, cause I, obviously in, in the book, I read about you getting sober. I would have thought that the dates overlapped differently. So I was, I was also thinking like, how did they let him get on camera like this? Like, like how didn't someone intervene in the room? Because this is obviously a person who needed help. But, but now I'm, now I'm fascinated and, and thrown off by the fact that it, it happened differently than I remember.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  I mean, everything you could be, like, the only thing that I know without a shadow of a doubt was I was sober two months before that.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  The date is sneered in your memory.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I remember when I first got sober and you know, I would go to these men's stag meetings, which were these all men 12 step meetings. And these guys who were like pretty gruff would say to me, well, when'd you get sober? What's your day? And you would, you'd be like, you'd feel pressure to know right off the top of your head. And they'd say, good, like protect that date with your life. And so, but to your point and what I talk about in the book is like, that kid, the only thing I was doing right in that moment was staying sober. And I certainly could have still been all of the other, I was still thoroughly out of my mind, I'm sure.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  So walk me through that that rock bottom moment because you do you do talk about it in the book, but what it's kind of a cliche trajectory of like child actor gets hooked on drugs, gets sober, turns their life around. But but but how does that go for you? Because I would have thought at that moment, watching you being even though we're roughly the same age, you are someone who done all this stuff. So I would have thought like this guy's like on the top. This guy's on top of the world. This guy has all the stuff. This this guy's crushing. He must be so happy. But you were the exact opposite.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  I think that basically to just like give quick touchstones, you know, I grow up incredibly overweight, 100 pounds overweight. So then I lose 100 pounds, but I'm the same head in a new body. And so I discover this new medicine that is way more efficacious in food and less calories. And I basically trade a Prius for a Ferrari. And I spend the next four years totally in chase of being a cliche, setting my life on fire, ruining relationships in show business, just becoming known as unreliable, and and and just tough to work with. I'm either running from the police on a regular basis, mostly because I called

• 26:52Speaker 01

  them myself, because I assumed there was some sort of incentive for being the first to alert them. There isn't, in case you're wondering. And then and basically breaking my mom's heart on a regular basis. So that's where I find myself at 21, about two months before I get sober. And sort of the the big thing that I've always wanted my whole life was I hated being different from as far back as I can remember, being the son of an only of a being an only child of a single parent, or being overweight or what have you. I just wanted to be normal. And then when I fell in love with acting, I didn't want to be the funny fat guy. And I didn't want to be the kid actor. I just wanted to be an

• 27:32Speaker 01

  actor. And so what I talk about in the book was there was this moment, somehow I had booked this, the biggest part of my life, when I was in the midst of in the depths of my drug addiction, a movie called The Whack-ness with my favorite actor, Sir Ben Kingsley. And the movie got into the Sundance Film Festival and it was my dream to not only be at this festival, but I was finally a real actor, not a kid star, not the funny fat guy, a real actor. And we're at the screening the night, you know, the movie premieres and Quentin Tarantino is there and suddenly I'm like literally amongst the people I so look up to. And I wake up the next morning and the reviews are coming in and the reaction's great. And I immediately tell

• 28:14Speaker 01

  everyone in the house, I'm saying that I need to leave right now. I'm getting on a plane. I'm out of here. And people are screaming at me. They said, Josh, why? Like, this never happens. And it may never happen again. And you're gonna leave, enjoy this. And I just, as soon as I was a member of the club, I, you know, it's, it's that great saying, like, I never wanted to be a part of a club that would have me as a member. And it was the, one of the most impactful moments in my life that I realized, good or bad, at the highest of the high or the lowest of the low, I am bottomless and nothing, be it food, drugs, or proceeds, can fill up this hole in my soul.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  And I got sober two weeks later. And I think it's, it's undoubtedly correlated, that sort of spiritual bottom.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Do you, do you think about, because I've written about this before, how many people have moments like that, where they get to the top of whatever it is, they hit a bestseller list, or they sell their company, or they, you know, they're cover of a magazine, they win a gold medal, Super Bowl, whatever it is. And then they realize that it was never gonna do the thing for them that they wanted it to do. Because that's, I think that's what drives so many of us, right? Some, you wanted your dad to be proud of you, you wanted to not feel like a loser, you wanted to feel cool, you wanted to be comfortable in your own skin, whatever that driving thing is for, for each person, that, that drives you to, to achieve greatness at some profession, uh, then, then it turns out to be anticlimactic. How many of us turn

• 29:57Speaker 00

  away from that moment? Like, instead of getting the, instead of actually listening, we're like, oh, I just need to do it more?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Totally. No, I mean, we wake up, you know, I find, I can only speak for people like me, right? So addicts, we respond great to catastrophe. So your wife walks out on you, you, you lose your job, you get a DUI. It's, it's like this, this exogenous kind of punch to the face of like, wake the hell up, look at what you're doing. But it's short-lived. And what you do in that moment is what is truly that crossroads moment. There's like a saying where if a guy calls you who's drunk and has been drunk for a long time and asks for help, don't let him take a nap because he might rest up a bit and he might eat a

• 30:50Speaker 01

  sandwich and have a little bit of time go by and think, eh, it wasn't that bad. So you're right. There are certainly people who have these moments every couple of years or what have you. And instead of, of taking action to maybe getting help, they, they double down on whatever got them there in the first place.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's not even just, it's help. It's just like understanding the truth of it. Right? So, so like, you, you know, you sacrifice for years and years, you know, to become a, let's say a Super Bowl winning coach and you've neglected your family, you've neglected your health, you've done all this stuff to get there. And then it's anticlimactic. There's this moment where you go, oh, it wasn't worth it. You know, like it wasn't what I thought it would be. And then, yeah, you go to sleep that night and you party a couple of days and you wake up a week later, that the, the, the breakthroughness of that epiphany, it, it has a short shelf life and then it expires and then you just go back to how

• 31:47Speaker 00

  you've always been. You don't make the change because you've, you've lost, that, you know, it's, it's, it's expired. It's moved on. You've lost, the freshness of it wore off and then you just go back to who you always were.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've heard Paul Gil Martin, who has this great podcast, The Mental Illness Happy Hour, talks about a friend of his who summited Everest and was at, you know, sort of base camp and explaining what it was like, you know, slowly getting up as the sun was coming, you know, to its highest peak and reaching the peak and looking down. And Paul says, "And when you reached the top, was your father's love there?"

• 32:32Speaker 01

  It's so true. It's right. I mean, I think we're all, you know, it would be so fun to ask, like, someone who's like the GOAT, like Tom Brady. I suspect someone like him, it's about the doing. He's like, um, what would the word be? He's just like, it's, for him, it wasn't about the end result as much as like just being great in every single moment, and the byproduct of that was major success. But who knows? Maybe he hated his dad. I don't know.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  No, I get it. It's like, you think, like, "This'll make my parents proud." And then, only as you get older, you go, "You shouldn't have to make your parents proud." That's the whole point. Your parents are supposed to be proud of you. Like, it's a faulty premise. You can't do that. Do you know what I mean? Like, if your parents weren't proud of you before, just for being a human being that they loved, they're not gonna be proud of you when you climb Mount Everest, or you make it to Sundance for The Whack-It, or you make a million dollars, or whatever the thing is. It was, you were never gonna get it. And I think it's coming to that painful conclusion that you're gonna have to live a different kind of life and get what you want

• 33:45Speaker 00

  from some other source. That's where we have the constant amnesia, or the lie to ourself. Or we fill that hole with drugs, or alcohol, or sex, or whatever it is.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything that I've ever put before, everything of the material world that I've used to make me feel okay, has always had diminishing returns until it just literally, it becomes just a capital N negative in my life. And it was food and drugs, and then it was prestige and romance and all these things. But for better or for worse, it never, like my synapses, they get tired. You know, you can only take so much Molly before you have no more serotonin left to give. Like my synapses just get tired and it goes, whatever this thing is, the secret sauce that worked at one time doesn't. So either you have to find something else, or go to some, you know, age old truths that have always worked to give people fulfillment.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  What's interesting too, though, is I think we so want epiphanies, right? So we not only want those breakthrough moments, but then people also want to hear, okay, he gets sober, and then he was like a functioning contributing member of society from that point forward. What I found so fascinating about your story, is you get sober, and then you talk about you were still, I don't want to say you were a dick, but you still could not get out of your own way for like several years. So like the drugs were removed, and that was a positive step. But I liked what you said earlier, where you said, um, the only thing you were doing right was not being, was not being high, even though it looked like you were being high in that video. You were, you were, you still had all the other

• 35:23Speaker 00

  destructive tendencies, ego, etc. And that didn't, that didn't go away for a while either.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. And, and you know, the only prerequisite, I like in 12 step that they say like, the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking or using. You don't even have to have stopped yet. Because the reality is, is like, and I don't mean to say this in a negative way, it's just the unfortunate truth. Addiction is winning, right? I don't, I'm not sure there's any actuaries in, in recovery. But like, I've heard the number thrown around, it's like 95% of people who either go through rehab, or, or have some sort of detox, have, have an issue with drugs and alcohol or substance, stay using throughout their life.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  So, so we're already the, I'm already the lucky one that I'm able to then like, end the, or momentarily pause this thing. And now I've been given admittance to this sort of world of possible growth and how much I want to key into that, how much now inner work I want to do because I finally have been allowed into this place where I'm, uh, tools are possible and, and resources available to start working on these things that got me to drink and use and eat in excess and facing these negative patterns that addict or not, in general, I don't think most people want to look at these negative patterns that

• 36:56Speaker 01

  we accrue that usually are all stemmed from instinct run wild, right? We, we have these instincts to procreate, to find shelter, to be able to fill our bellies. And that's all good, except it becomes, well, I need a few people to procreate with and it'd be great to have a couple shelters. And if I'm going to fill my belly, it should be with like caviar and champagne. And suddenly these natural instincts overblown start to bring us a lot of discomfort and, and disease. So, look, I know a lot of guys who are sober 30 plus years and they're overweight, smoke two packs a day and are divorced and are always right. And I, I don't want what they have. And conversely, and, and not to say,

• 37:40Speaker 01

  and then there are a couple of guys with that much time that are like, men and women who are like, you know, the Maharishi that I just look up to in such a big way. But conversely, there are people who have a couple of months or a couple of years and they're so, you know, they're doing so much work on themselves and they're so clued into like those principles. And I'm like, God, they have less time sober than me and I'm so attracted to how awake they are.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  Do you know Tank Sinatra?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  So he, he, he and I were talking about this thing that he said a while ago that I really liked. He was like, you know, so he's like, some people, they drink the, the hole away. Or he's like, some people drink to fill the hole. Some people have sex to fill the hole. Some people do drugs to fill the hole. Some people work to fill the hole. He was talking to this, about this to like a sober person. And they, they were like a person who, who, who had never been an addict. And they were just like, what hole are you talking about? You know? And, and I, I thought that was so brilliantly said because like, if you, if you are not a broken person, none of this makes any sense. Like if you don't have that destructive energy or the, that, that hole you're trying to fill, you don't get it.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  But if you are one of those people, then what you understand is that just stopping the drugs or the drinking or the, you know, the sexual behaviors, it doesn't actually address the fundamental root cause of all of it. Right? You still have that energy that then goes off in other destructive ways, less destructive, more socially acceptable. But, you know, maybe it goes into ego or maybe it goes into these other things. It doesn't just magically resolve because you stopped using.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So drugs and alcohol tend to drive you to a bottom very quickly because they're so efficacious. So the downside is so great. And, you know, if you look at like the personality disorders as opposed to severe mental illness, you have like bipolar and schizophrenia and these things that like require, require you to really look at these things and perhaps take medication or certain ways because it's so intrusive on your life. But then there, in, in my opinion, are the really insidious personality disorders we don't talk about, like narcissism by borderline, histrionic, obsessive.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  That you can get through life, but you sometimes sit and sometimes they're not even capable of saying this. But a borderline person or narcissist would be like, why don't I have any real like, why do I seem to turn off everyone?

• 40:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  But it wasn't so glaring that they were forced to look at this thing and they wake up at 60 and go like, geez, I seem to have turned off everyone. I can't imagine why. And I see that in people in life where they have these things that haven't served them these negative patterns. But they were sort of never forced to face it and they wonder why sort of they're unhappy at the time that they are. So I'm glad that I was forced to like, really look at these things. And I know now I have to constantly look at them. You know, it's maintenance. It's like, last night's meal won't keep me fed.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  So when do you start doing that work on yourself? So you obviously get sober, you start going to 12 step. But when do you start working on yourself as a person? Like, when does the reading start and the sort of self improvement stuff? Cause it seems like you go down that rabbit hole pretty quickly too.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  I, you know, I think again, like assets done too much become defects, right?

• 41:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  I, I overdo it, but if I can, if I can pull it back slightly to a more manageable, positive way. In all my endeavors, that level of ambition and work ethic can serve me. And so as soon as I knew that. Look, I remember and I talk about this in the book. I listened to this woman shared a meeting when I had like four or five years sober. And she said something to the effect of, um, you are the fish you are trying to catch. You are the love of your life. And what are you willing to let go of that stands between you and happiness? She said, you know, there are the glaring defects that we all want to let go of.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  I, I don't think anyone wants to be, um, you know, violently angry all the time or jealous or, or slothful. Those things are easy in theory to let go of because they're not really attractive. But she says, once you get rid of those, what are you willing to let go of that you think serve, the things that you think might be serving you? That relationship you can't let go of, or that job you think that defines you. And I remember thinking in my head, God, she is so right. And a beat went by and then I thought, oh, I hope that doesn't happen to me. And so at every turn, you know, when I plateaued, when I realized that I've been uncomfortable in my own skin.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  And if I avoid it long enough, I might just get uncomfortable enough to need a drink. And I'm not willing to drink today. And so because of that, I forced myself to do the work that I know that what's on the other end is a bit of spiritual reprieve, is a little bit of that ease in life that I'm searching for. But it's, you know, it's going to take some work.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  But when did you start reading? It seemed like you you fell in love with reading at some point. Was that after you got sober or you've always been a reader?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  I think, you know, certainly, I think podcasts helped a lot, helped a lot, to be honest. And as far as in 2015 and sort of like, I feel like it was when I first got turned on to pods. And I always loved talk radio and whatnot. But then, you know, listening to Rogan or listening to these podcasts where they would interview these people who had written books that were facing this idea of of growth and and and self-discovery. And then getting turned on to your books and then Robert Greene. And and, you know, early on, like books like Anthony DeMello's, like The Way to Love and all these different. You know, it just, it became very clear that the guys in sobriety that I looked up to seemed to be hip

• 44:00Speaker 01

  to these these texts that were sort of like the graduate program of sobriety. It was the extra layer, even like, I'm not a religious guy, but like, you know, Emmett Fox and all these. And then eventually Eckhart Tolle and sort of like the introduction in the spiritual readings. And then I just got, and then even like some things that started slightly, I don't know what, you know, I I read The Game because I was 22 and I was single, right? And reading Neil Strauss and and just he's such a great writer and and that book that can be slightly evil, probably. But then in following his sort of trajectory through life, and I just got attracted to seekers like you.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  And and I I wanted to read the things that you guys read.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  Do you think it was also like you were looking for someone to give you like advice about life that maybe you should have gotten from your parents that because one of them wasn't there and then the other one seemed like she had her own issues like you were I feel like a lot of the reading that I do especially early on in that space is like these are conversations I wish I'd had with my dad that I just didn't for some reason and you kind of you're looking for not even like fatherly wisdom you're looking to be kind of part of a tradition and the way that you might have gotten thoughts from grandparents and elders or like you're looking for for that advice about how to be a person in the world that just doesn't seem to exist anywhere anymore.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  And not only that, like I really look up to my father-in-law who seems to encapsulate all the things that you're talking about and he just does them naturally.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  I'm not sure he could he could convey it to me like I don't know these words because it's so natural to him. So you're right, I think and I think to your point, yes, I had a non-traditional sort of family structure. You know, it sounds like you had a more traditional one and yet here we are both seeking inevitably and what I always tell people like you will have to parent yourselves.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  No matter how good your parents were eventually, you will have to fill in the gaps and and even just in a separate way, what was so attractive to me about like sobriety and meetings, you know, when I started going to these all guy meetings, it was like I had never want I never felt comfortable in an all guy anything because I didn't think I possessed the requisite testosterone. But when these guys are hitting me with like these things about what it means to be in quotes, a man and responsibility and you know, if you want self-esteem, do esteemable acts. It was I was like, how was this not given to me?

• 46:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  In fifth grade?

• 46:38Speaker 00

  No, I totally agree. That's how I felt when I found stoicism. I was like, why wasn't why didn't why did I read all this nonsense? Why did I do square dancing in fourth grade and not talk about this? You know, where was this all my life? I feel like.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel like there's a Seneca quote I love where he says, "You can't choose your parents, but you can choose whose children you want to be." Right? And I feel like it's this sort of decision. You sort of meet these people and you're like, "Oh, these are the people that I want to be like." And you'd never met them before in your life, so you didn't even know they were possible. And then, then you realize you can read or learn from them. You can, you can be an heir to that tradition, even if you have no relation to them.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think, you know, I feel like you're a big fan of Alain de Botton as well. And he has this great quote about how we're taught physical hygiene at like an incredibly young age, right? Like, my son, since he had teeth, knows that like, he and I stand together, him on a stool, and me just without a stool, because I'm of a normal man height, and we brush our teeth at night. Like, this is how it goes. And we take a bath every night. So we're taught like, physical hygiene, but we're never, ever taught mental hygiene. It's just assumed you should know how to navigate the world.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Which of course you don't, and it's way harder to navigate that world. You figure out the hygiene stuff on your own, eventually. You'd be like, "I stink. What do I do about this?" But the mental stuff is so much more insidious and difficult, and yeah, we give almost no guidance whatsoever.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  It's, it's rough. And, and everything now with social media is all, everything's a bumper sticker, like hustle harder. Like, what does that mean? Like, I don't know. It's a destination, but not how to get there.

• 48:31Speaker 00

  Well, you know what I was thinking though, that's so funny about your story? You know that, that expression, like when the, when the student is ready, the teacher appears? The whole point of the collaboration with you and Dax, which is where we started, was that you would start a YouTube channel, that that was a viable entertainment path for a person. And so I was, I was looking, because I'd never thought about it before. I was like, "So is that the YouTube channel that he ended up starting? Did he just go claim that?" And I, no, you ended up starting your own YouTube channel, like however many years later, that now has like millions of subscribers. So that actually was the path for you in life. You just were not at a place to take advantage of it then.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Totally. And I, I, I think, and isn't it interesting now, how I was not able to take advantage of it until like 10 years later, when there was enough sort of evidence and data that made it really attractive. And then there's someone like Dax, who I don't think was able to fully take, take advantage of the prime of, of social media.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  So it is timing.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  Yes. Well, so, so that, yeah, that's the idea that like you actually can't be anything else. You know, so do you think about like, you, you talk about some big moments. There's like the Judd Apatow movie that you could have gotten that you didn't get, or some other projects that you sort of blew. As you think back on that, do you have regrets? Or do you go, actually, it could have never happened? Like, it needed to happen the way that it happened?

• 50:01Speaker 01

  I absolutely believe that fully. And I don't know if I'm just doing that so I can sleep at night, but totally like, I think, I think that if you were capable, if you've accrued the skills and wits to be like a quasi respectable member of society who's not like overly selfish or trying to sabotage other people, and you get given an option or a crossroad or, or a fork in the road, I should say, there's either the right decision or the decision that you had to make to learn something to be able to make the next right decision. Right? And that's it. Like, I, I, cause I don't worry, you know, I no longer see sort of like the glaring neon sign of like, um, that, that is begging me to go

• 50:46Speaker 01

  do something that will totally put my life in jeopardy. Like, that's not an option anymore. But certainly I'll get put, you know, or recently I was in a position where, you know, there was an opportunity that would have moved me and my family out of the country to go work 10 months out of the year. And sure, it could have been some prestige and some money and whatnot, but I knew that wasn't good for the overall health of my family. So I said, no, now that might mean that I need to have financial insecurity for the next 10 months to learn something. But I, I did the best right decision at, at the moment that I was faced with that. But you're right. I mean, I tell the story of, of, of Judd Apatow in, in my book, where six months after I had finished Drake and Josh, I'm

• 51:30Speaker 01

  19, I'm in the depths of my addiction. All I want to do is graduate out of kids TV and be respected. And someone as brilliant with the foresight as Judd Apatow says, "There's something about you that's funny." I auditioned for a movie he's producing and he calls me and says, "The part you auditioned for is not right for you, but you are funny. So I'll write you a small part in the movie, but hang out on set, write some jokes for people. We'll figure out different scenes to kind of throw you into to maybe put a button on a scene and let's see what happens." And I did that in a movie called Drove It Taylor. But unfortunately, I could not take advantage of that opportunity at the time because I was so not ready.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  And I basically turned my back on the guy who's basically a kingmaker for funny Jews such as myself, non-traditional leading men types.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  You could have been part of the crew, that sort of Judd Apatow crew that did a generation of movies and that didn't happen.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  He called, I remember when we were on set, the first couple of days it was going well. And he said to me, "You know, I'm working on this other movie right now. You should stop by that set. Maybe you can, you know, think of some funny jokes or we'll put you in a scene." And I was like, "Oh, yeah, what's it called?" And he was like, "It's this thing called Superbad." And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, I'll try to make it." Ryan, spoiler alert, I never made it. But to your point, you're right. It wasn't, it wasn't right for me. And I, I mean, I had to completely blow that up to eventually be in enough pain to get sober and get my life on track.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  Isn't it funny how different that is? So you, you blow that opportunity like unintentionally. But then here you are, all these years later, getting a, you know, potentially equally good opportunity. And you're like, "No, I'm not going to take it." But for totally different reasons. So it's the same thing, but for healthy reasons versus unhealthy reasons.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so, that's so well put. You're right. I, I, and you know, I don't know if it's the universe doing for me what I couldn't do for myself, or it's just, you know, it's just random. I don't know.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's weird. It's very strange. So how did we, I remember we reconnected because you messaged me on Instagram.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  And I was like, you, there's no way you remember me.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  I did not. I, I was a fan, dude, I'm a total fan. And then, of course, at the moment, it, it was almost as the message was opening, I'm like, Ryan from The Collective, 21-year-old Ryan, of course, Ryan. But up until that, a millisecond before, I just loved your writing, and I was a fan and of books like the ones that you write. And I had a podcast, and you came on, and then we immediately, I don't know, I just, you know, obviously, we had had some history, but there is that language of the heart with like a fellow traveler that you have. And luckily, like, we had history, so I feel like we became sort of closer than

• 54:43Speaker 01

  I would with someone that was a total stranger before. But nevertheless, there's just that, that sort of like, common language that, that is born in those moments.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know what, yeah, you're right. That's exactly what it is. There's some like, shared history, even though we were literally in the same room together for like, 30 minutes.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. It, it doesn't make sense. And then, but then also, like, what was great about you, Ryan, and I, I just love this in general, is like, you know, whether it was your past at American Apparel or what have you, like, you had just enough dirt on you to where I could be like, ah, like, this guy gets it. Like, because if you were just like, a perfect Buddha from jump, I would have been like, I don't know if this guy can get me.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, it's weird. My, my addiction slash compulsions were much more socially acceptable, right? They weren't, they weren't actively destructive. But when I look at, like, working at The Collective then, for Tucker, and then for American Apparel, working for these different people. They're all the same people. It's the same place. It's like me trying to attach myself to or being willfully blind to what was obvious to everyone else. Just over and over for like 10 years of my life. It's totally inexplicable to me.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  But it's, yeah, it's, and it's like we talk about what we said earlier, which was like assets becoming, you know, defects when, when they're in, there's too much of it, right? And I feel like you really, you toe that line. And like, those are the people that I'm like, I, you know, my hat is off to the, to the guy who can go to a monastery and meditate for 10 hours a day. I'm just not capable of that. Like, I really want to see someone who's taking these, you know, these ancient truths and applying that to a really annoying, you know, moment, like someone who's really living it. That, that fascinates me.

• 56:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. And look, I think if you're not broken, you don't have to do any thinking about these things. You just are. You're talking about your father-in-law. The, the people are just naturally there, almost lack an ability to communicate about it. In the same way that a really talented athlete usually doesn't make a good coach. It has to be a slightly subpar athlete who has to actually wrap their head around the game and how the game works. That, that can function in a leadership role. LeBron James probably actually wouldn't be a great coach because he's so amazing. You need someone who's a couple tiers below him, who has to be more aware of how the game works.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  I would argue that it might, it might be why LeBron doesn't always seem like the greatest leader.

• 57:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Just in general, because his ability is so striking and undeniable that it's so frustrating for him when other people can't just meet him at that level.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  Kobe was that way for sure.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  Totally. Not everyone is Kobe. Like, it's, it's hard to understand that.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  I, I, you know, like, and the thing with my father-in-law is that he does, it's not like he has this hack, right? So that he can subvert all, all the natural sort of requirements of being a human. It just comes naturally. So he is the guy who will pick you up from the airport. Like, that is of such high value in the world in which we live in. He's, he's constantly doing for others. He always, it, I, sometimes I want, I play this game in my head with him, where I try to eat after him, because he's always the last person to fill his plate at a family dinner. Everyone eats first. And it's, it's inspiring. And like, you know, he's got four kids, and I watch him, like, when there's like, this

• 58:31Speaker 01

  natural, and it's never, you know, um, said with vitriol, but like, there'll be like, a natural sort of family conflict, where the siblings are going at, you know, going at each other. And he'll just kind of give me a look and a half-smile and just, you know, roll his eyes. I'm like, don't you want to get in here? Like, I want to get in here. But he knows that to be unreactive in most situations is the way. And, you know, I was recently talking to, I know you know, like, Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reece. And, I mean, those are the happy people.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  They have that energy. They have that energy.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  And Gabby said it so well. She's like, listen, like, because I said, I'm like, stop it already. Like, you're both attractive, you're both super athletes, it's not fair. And she's like, I was like, how are you guys so generous? She's like, it's not that I, she's like, I'm aware of the secrets of the universe. Like, I know what begets a good life. It's not like this is inherent to me. Like, and I think what she was sort of saying is like, I have all the natural selfish feelings. I, I do feel elite at times and different than others. But I just know if I, if I am this way, I'm gonna get a good life by being good to others.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah. Well, that's actually good, right? Because if it is just natural, if there's no conscious willpower behind it, it's actually not that impressive, right? It's like just being really tall. Like, you didn't have anything to do with that, right? You, uh, I, someone said this about Mr. Rogers, I think it was his wife. She was like, I, I, I want you to know how hard he worked, right? Because if he wasn't working at it, then he was just a saint. And then it's not that impressive.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Right. God, that's so true. And he was, you know, you watch that documentary and you go, when is the second act bomb about to drop? We're like, ah, Mr. Rogers was weirder than we thought, but he's not. He was just a good dude for goodness sake.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  But not naturally a good dude. I mean, naturally good, but not naturally perfect. That that was the, that was the result of conscious work on himself.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  Where do you fall into that?

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  On the much lower end of the spectrum. Like, you know what I mean? Like, sort of not, certainly not perfect. And then definitely working, having to work very hard for whatever it is that, that is good. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  Like, and my wife talks about this where she's like, one of us is stoic and the other writes about stoicism. Right? Like, like, you know, she, she has it down. If I, like, if I don't lose my temper about something that's very upsetting, it's because I was able to go, that is very upsetting and I'm going to choose not to be upset by it. Not because that's just how I am. Because I'm not that way.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  But do you, and do you find like, you found age old truths through the packaging of stoicism? Like, I found it through, you know, 12 step in some respects and through your writing and others. Like, we're all working, like, we're all trying to get to Disney World. It's just like, which route are you taking? But it's all repackaged for what's consumable for you, right? And sometimes that's religion. It can be so many things.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  I think that's right. Well, I would say we're not all trying. But of those of us who are trying, there's a lot of different ways there.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  In fact, I'd argue, most people are not trying at all. And that's why even some of the most basic things in 12 step are actually not that basic. You know, when someone's like, it's work, it works if you work it or, you know, these, these cliches, if you've never heard them before, or you do the opposite of them, they actually are quite groundbreaking and profound.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Do you find that you fall like sometimes with all this knowledge, I'll still find myself falling into a bit of like optimistic nihilism where even though I know this these things to be true without a shadow of a doubt, I sometimes go like, but it's all random and who gives a shit anyway?

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think I think that's that's the struggle. It's it's easier to just give up and to feel like it doesn't matter than to keep trying, even though you might have some doubts, even though it might seem like there isn't much point to it. And then especially like, you know, you work in an industry like yours and mine, where you see a lot of shitty people do quite well.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  Or get away with horrible things.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yes. I'm glad I, you know, the reckoning that's happened over the last decade and obviously in in in moments like this, the pendulum has to swing way to the other side for it to eventually find balance. But like anytime I hear like another white guy actor who's like, there's no parts for us anymore. I'm like, we had it pretty fucking good for a long time, my friend. I'm just like, listen, dude, like, but yes, there can be some like frustrating moments where you feel like the overcorrection is so over. But like overall, this is such a good thing for the health of this business that we are a part of.

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think that's right. And then generally, you know, when you look at a shitty person who's succeeding, I try to remind myself that it also still sucks to be them as it sucked to be you when you were succeeding but unhappy.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  So when I asked you to be my advisor when writing this book, what went through your mind? Were you like, oh, no?

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  No, and I was like, this sounds really fun. I I loved it. That's one of my favorite rules to be able to advise on a project, but not actually have to do the really heavy lifting. So it was really fun. No, I had a great time. I was flattered.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. I sometimes I'm like, I forget that you're like nine or 10 months younger than me. And I'm like, because this is gonna, you know, blow up your ego to as much as a stoic would allow their ego to be stroked. But, you know, I bought a house with my wife and I was working on my office and my wife was like, oh, I want to put like pictures of like the people that you love, you know, and like you look up to. She's like, so where can I get a picture of Ryan?

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  No, come on.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  So it'd be you up there with, you know, Basquiat and a couple of other.

• 1:05:02Speaker 00

  Wow, that's very cool. Well, so speaking of of people you admire or trying to strive to be something, how has being a parent changed you?

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  It, I think this is a Seinfeld quote, but like having a child is like being handed the keys to a city that's already been built. You just open the door and you are in this new city. You had nothing to do with with the establishment of it. And it's, it's

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  What does that mean?

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  In this idea that it's like, you don't, you usually in life, whether it's, everything requires construction, right? From your great dreams, it's got to start, you know, at practice and peewee. And, you know, you're, you're, if you want to be a lawyer, it starts at law school or even before that. But like, you get to reap all the benefits of what it feels to have a child the moment they're born. And you don't have to earn it, right? So it was like, I fell in love with my kid the moment he was here. I didn't have to get to know him. Right? It was this instant connection. And it, I didn't have to learn

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  how to love him. I just felt this overwhelming like connection with this kid. And, you know, I say this in the book, and I think it's like one of, it was the benefits of writing the book, because I don't know if I would have ever sat down and phrased it this way. And now I feel like it is so, so true.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  I never met my dad. He died in his eighties. I was twenty six. And I'll never get an amends from my dad. And while I've forgiven him, I, you know, it would have been nice. And then when I had my son, I realized that I received the amends I'd always been looking for by being the father to him that I never felt that I got. And that correcting generational trauma can be as easy as just not giving it to the next generation. And so, you know, that for me was, it just allowed me to really put to bed so many of the experiences in my life. And also, and I say this in the book, like,

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  you gotta be careful how much growing you do alone. You know, you don't want to be a Faberge egg where you're gorgeous and ornate, but the moment you get jostled around a little bit, you shatter. So like, getting married and committing to my wife in that way, like forced me to face things that I could be doing better that she made glaringly clear. And then having a kid forced me to like, look at my coping mechanisms and look at the way that I think is appropriate and say like, that's not right for my child.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, and Gary Shandling, Doc, he says, give what you didn't get, which I think is a beautiful way of thinking about being a parent.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  It's, I mean, you talk about, I love what you said that you wish, I think you said on my podcast, you wish you had had kids early, earlier, only because like you would have started the best part of your life sooner.

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it would have made me be who I am now earlier.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  Which is the adult that you're talking about, like it forces you to just deal with your shit.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just because they're because in one small package, they are the thing like a child can allow you to be selfless. And to me, like helping my fellows boat to the other side and yours too will cross. Like that to me is like the secret sauce. Right. And I've always tried to think my way into right action, but the answer has always be act your way into right thinking. So whenever I have friends who are nervous about having a kid, I always want to say, the only way kids will disrupt your life is if you are still really into brunch.

• 1:09:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think to be successful, young is, you know, engenders a kind of selfishness. But then also to be an artist, artists are inherently selfish, right? To be a creative person, you have to be selfish. And so having a kid, ideally, is the first time that selfishness is really challenged.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  And like, but I love when you and I talk and you talk about like keeping banker's hours because you have your like set time that you work and it doesn't intrude on your time with your kids.

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, no, it forces you to be a regular person in a way that you can get away with not being a regular person if you're a successful artist or entrepreneur or whatever. Because your kid definitely keeps regular hours.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Yes. And I don't know, you know, like I, I do all the things. Growing up, I had a single mom, right? And she was older and we lived in New York City. We didn't have a lot of dough. So like on the weekend, if we did one thing on a Saturday, like go to the mall and eat at the food court between 12 and two, that was it. When we got home at 2:30, we were shut down for the night. And I was like, shit, I'm an only child. And now it's just me and the TV. This sucks. And now with my son, like I get, and I can't believe how, how, you know, it's not that expensive. I'd be like, do you want to go to the trampoline park? Because we can go right now. Like, and he'll be like, of course I want to go. And I'm like, this is 20 bucks. Like, it's not exactly Disney World passes.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Or, you know, and we do so much of that. And I don't feel like, oh, I'm here, I could be doing yoga. And I think some parents feel that way. But I'm lucky that I don't feel that at all. I'm getting the kick out of doing, reliving this with him.

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  Well, your story illustrates this a little bit with your dad. It's like having a kid and being a parent are very different things.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Yes. And it, you know, the thing with my dad, what helped me was all I knew of my father was that he had a family and kids, or I'm sorry, had a wife and kids, and they were grown, right? Because he was sixty when he was with my mom. And, and so, I, I, I tell this story, when I found out he had passed away, because he was an older dude, he didn't have much of an online footprint. But I knew my siblings' names. And so, a friend of mine said, why don't you put that into Facebook? And all of a sudden, this treasure trove of pictures of my father, I mean, I had never even seen a picture of him until I was twenty-six. And all these pictures come up of him at bar mitzvahs and weddings, and then eventually, when he passed away,

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  like, these beautiful tributes from my siblings to their dad, our dad, weird to even say it that way, about how much they loved him, and how he was, what I wanted him to be for me, he was that for them. So, there could be other, other me's running around, or maybe he was just a guy who totally messed up, and didn't have the, the amount of courage it would take at sixty to completely turn his life upside down. And so, I can't be the arbiter of the ultimate right, because he was a good dad, just for them.

• 1:12:09Speaker 00

  Not to you.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:12Speaker 00

  Right. And the only way you can undo that, is, the only way you can find any meaning from that, is to be a good dad yourself.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm, I'm righting the wrongs, I'm not passing the trauma. I mean, I, I originally wanted to put this in the book, and then I didn't. But, you know, it's not for me to diagnose anyone as an alcoholic or not. But, from what I know of my grandfather, who I never met, he liked to drink, eat, smoke ten cigars a day, regularly sit at his dress factory and work on fire for the insurance money, and drop dead at fifty. And, he was nice enough to give this proclivity for overdoing things to my mom, who, you know, wrestled with it a lot of her life, but luckily, got into therapy in twelve-step, who then gave it to

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  me when she saw her little boy, sort of facing it. And, now, my son, who, you know, is three, has a really good chance at only being, like, reasonably dysfunctional, like, just having a normal amount of messed-up-ness. And, I think about, wow, it took four generations to, to clean this up. And that's, I think it's pretty powerful.

• 1:13:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, to just not leave them worse than you were is a, is a low, but also very high bar.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so, it's, it's definitely the goal.

• 1:13:37Speaker 00

  When you, sorry, this is a weird echo.

• 1:13:43Speaker 00

  When you now have a kid in your house, does it help you understand how insane your own childhood was? That's been really different for me being like, oh, now I know how you're supposed to treat a five year old.

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  And what a five year old needs.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  It's so, it's so telling. And, and because I know on a, on an adult cerebral level. But I mean, I, you know, my wife had COVID six weeks ago, and so she was locked in our room for five days. And so I had my son four or five days over Christmas break. Like there was no school, it was just him and I. And I would literally put him down at seven thirty and lay on the couch scrolling TikTok at a quarter to eight. So I was like, I deserve this. And I'm like, and like by seven fifty nine, I'd be asleep with like my phone off to the side. Cause I was so, and I'm like, wow, my mom did this for eighteen years, like, and being the sole parent.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  And so while I can reconcile all of that and see on a logical level, like the Herculean amount of strength it took for her to do that. I, I am so aware that I was dealing with some, some things that maybe a kid shouldn't have to deal with. And I, I'm careful about that because on one hand, those truths have been important to face. This idea of like, I kind of, I never had that opportunity that I hope my son will have at eighteen to be wonderfully um, open to doing whatever he wants. I didn't have that, you know, I had to make money and I had to keep going. And I think that has installed a lot of neuroses and, and, and pressure.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  On me. But the other side of it is, and my friend reminds me of this, he's like, yo dude, like, your mom, like, look at you, like, you're a good kid, and that's because of your mom. Like, and it's only her. And so I have to be reminded of that, too, is balance, because it's easy to be like, well, you know, look at your parent and think, well, now I'm facing this, and you could have made it easier for me. But it's also about coming to terms with, like, hopefully, they were doing the best that they could.

• 1:15:58Speaker 00

  Well, it's not, it's not good or bad, it just was what it was. And, you know, in the same way, it's like, oh, I grew up, this happened to me, and so this was the result. Do you know what I mean? You're like, oh, uh, you know, I broke my leg when I was six, and then that messed with my growth plates, and that's why I'm the height I am. Right? It's not good or bad, it just is, right? It's just a fact.

• 1:16:23Speaker 00

  The, the lack of the moral judgment, I think, does allow you to be a little bit more peace. My therapist said, one time, I was talking about something with my parents, and she's like, look, man, these are the cards you were dealt. Like, you're just not gonna get, you're not gonna get what you need from these people. Right? Like, it's just, that's just how it is. That's, that, it's not good or bad, it just is. So what are you gonna do about it?

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  And how awful is it that your beautiful children, at a certain age, are gonna look at you and your wonderful wife, the stoic and the guy who writes about Stoicism, and they're gonna confront you? And like, my kid will too, and like, I give my mom shit, like, especially, you know, Jews who were born in the, you know, in the 1900s, inherited this, like, weird epigenetic trauma, right? Because like, even the ones who weren't in Europe, like, all they were hearing was stories of their families were wiped out, and a lot of Jews just showed up here on a boat, and would like, walk the lower, like, my grandmother walked the Lower East Side, like, at eight years old, an orphan without shoes. Like, this was the story of my grandmother,

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  who, completely unequipped, had my mom, and gave her the best she could. But my mom had a life that I'll never be able to understand that challenge. And mine was challenging, too. And sometimes I'll say to her, like, well, you chose to have me. Like, it's not my fault you had a harder life than I did. And I know that my kid is gonna give me, on some version, the same shit, and I'm gonna be like, you go to Montessori school, what more could you want from me?

• 1:17:55Speaker 00

  No, I think there's one, some intellectual humility that you have to have, right? That you're gonna do the best you can and it's not gonna be enough.

• 1:18:04Speaker 00

  But you still have to really try, right? And you have to do your best to give your kids a childhood that they don't need therapy for.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  Right. But they will.

• 1:18:16Speaker 00

  They probably will.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  Go to therapy probably.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  They probably will, but obviously to a certain degree, you have some semblance of control of how severe the therapy needed will be.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And do you find that like, I will, you know, I fall in lockstep with my wife and it's all those corny tropes of like, happy wife, happy life, but more so, I can recognize you naturally have a healthier interpersonal sort of strategy when it comes to the people she deals with on a daily basis, her family, and now in raising a kid. And so I'm happy to, you know, acquiesce to her and be her lieutenant as opposed to the general. And like, there's always one or two times where I'm like, no, I feel strongly about this, but for the most part, I go, even if I don't quite see it in the moment, there's enough data to suggest that you know best when it comes to our son.

• 1:19:12Speaker 00

  Well, that goes to the humility also, right? I don't remember, and even talking to my parents now, I didn't get much of a sense that they had any doubts or questions, which I think was kind of the problem, right? Like, they were very convinced this was the right way to do it.

• 1:19:29Speaker 00

  And so even the idea of like, no, I have some issues myself, so I'm actually gonna defer to you here, as opposed to just being convinced that my way is the right way.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so, I remember, I was doing an interview the other day and this woman gave me this thing, which I hate, which was, why are these TikTokers making so much money? And I said, she said, they don't do anything, do they? And I said, I have to stop you right there. I said, I don't wanna be that guy. I said, because I think every generation has looked at the next and been like, they don't get it. And I don't wanna have that boomer energy. Like, I wanna believe that they might be doing something that I can't quite appreciate at my age, but it's no, you know, more or less valuable.

• 1:20:13Speaker 00

  No, boomer energy, if I think about what I'm trying to avoid as a parent, pretty much all of it is that sort of boomer energy, which, which I think was different when we were kids. But as we've seen over the last four or five years, has really curdled as they've gotten older.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And it's, it's let go to like, you know, I look at parents my age and younger that, you know, in, in, I'm trying to pull some of the good, in quotes, boomer energy of this idea of like, I can't, I can't protect my kid against everything. I can't safety proof life for them. And I see so many of my fellows trying to do that. And I'm like, you know, I, I don't know if that's tenable.

• 1:20:58Speaker 00

  I was, I was writing an email for, for this thing I do every morning called Daily Dad the other day, and I, I heard the joke from somewhere, but I really liked it. It was like, do you ever remember your parents making sure you were drinking enough water? Like every once in your life? Now, like every kid has a water bottle. And if you send them to school and it's not like a environmentally safe water bottle filled, you know, like all hell will break loose. Then you just realize it's like, how much of the conflict I had with my parents was because I was a five year old who was thirsty and just no one, no one bothered to think whether I was hydrated or not, you know what I mean? And so just so, so much of, I think so much of it comes down to as we grow as a society,

• 1:21:39Speaker 00

  being able to be more conscientious and aware and considerate of all these other factors. And I think it makes you a better parent ultimately.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so too.

• 1:21:52Speaker 00

  And then, yeah, realizing as you've done the work on yourself, that care that you know you now deserve, like your kid also deserves.

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right on. And just sending them up to, you know, there are so many people like, I want to give them off ramps because we're all on this highway and we're all going towards like, no matter how enlightened we become, like, we have to get some level of security. And, and despite our best efforts, like, we're not going to be able to insulate them from Instagram culture, telling them X, Y, and Z.

• 1:22:27Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  So it's like, I just want them to know that there are signposts, be it like, you know, physical fitness and what that affords you, just getting, you know, endorphins going every day, or therapy, or talking to a friend, and then, and then the extra level, which is like, being of service to other people, like, there's just nothing, that is as close to heroin that I have found, like, it's like, literally, the only thing that I'm like, wow, when done correctly, this is pretty damn good.

• 1:22:55Speaker 00

  Well, even just the awareness that, like, hey, everyone has these wounds, this hole, and there's different ways to fill it, right? And that you're aware that drugs, or alcohol, or success, or ambition, that is one way. It's just a really not fun way in the end. Gives you, that's an ability to communicate an important lesson to your kids that your parents just didn't have the self-awareness, uh, or involvement to be able to give you.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  But is it all, is it mostly modeling, Ryan?

• 1:23:27Speaker 00

  Yes, sure.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  It is, right?

• 1:23:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  You have to be what you want your kids to be.

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the only way. It's the only, or, or, if you're, you can tell them it, but if you're not it, uh, you're, you're modeling the exact opposite of, of what you want them to be.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:44Speaker 00

  Well, man, dude, this was so fun. I'm so glad we reconnected and, uh,

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Ryan, I can't thank you enough.

• 1:23:52Speaker 00

  It's an honor to be a part of it.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  If this book is any good, it's because of you. Thank God.

• 1:23:56Speaker 00

  It's very good.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  You know, initially in this process, I, when I got this deal, and I was like, I need someone that I can bother often, and if it can be someone who I totally look up to and I respect their writing, and I just put it out there with you, but, you know, from the moment you agreed, I was like, okay, whatever version of this, because I, I felt slightly capable of writing, I was like, I think I have something to say, but now I feel like I have someone to actually form it into the delivery method I want it to be. So, thank you, dude. Proud to be your friend.

• 1:24:31Speaker 00

  Well, likewise, and you did it. I mean, I gave notes on it, but like, for people who don't know, almost 99% of these, these books are written by someone else. And you actually wrote it. I watched you write it. You actually wrote your book. And I think that's why it's good. And there's a level of authenticity and honesty and, and truth to it because you didn't just give a couple interviews and then a book came back and then you edited it. Now you're doing interviews about it. Like, you actually wrote this book. And so I, I hope what you take from the process is that, that you actually are a writer and you, you can make your own material. Like this was something based on

• 1:25:13Speaker 00

  your own life, but like, given what you've done on YouTube, given what you've done on social media, and now this, you should be very confident, I think, making something and putting it out there.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. And I only hope that it's a success so I can get a big advance to have you write the next one.

• 1:25:31Speaker 00

  I'll help, but I'm not going to write it. But I appreciate that, man. No, this was so fun.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  Awesome. Thanks, dude. Thanks for having me.

• 1:25:39Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:25:42Speaker 00

  You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa, the Stoa Pochyle, the painted porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can't all get together in one place because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the Stoa. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community. You could talk about, like today's episode, you could talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts, interacting with all these people who are using Stoicism to be better in their actual, real lives. You get more Daily Stoic meditations over the weekend, just for the Daily Stoic Life members, quarterly Q and As with me, cloth-bound edition of our Best of meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff, including

• 1:26:26Speaker 00

  discounts, and this is the best part, all our Daily Stoic courses and challenges. Totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our New Year, New You Challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial totally for free. Check it out at dailystoiclife.com.